Catalogue description Home Office and Department of Health and Social Security: Approved Schools (AS Symbol Series) Files

Documents in this series are arranged in broad numerical order by former reference numbers. File references incorporating the letter C were created by London Region (Central), and those with the letter S by London Region (South).

Following the Children and Young Persons Act 1933, reformatories were given a new lease of life as approved schools. In accordance with the Approved School Rules 1933, managers of approved schools were obliged to ensure that each school and its records were available for inspection by the Inspectorate of the Home Office Children's Department. This series contains correspondence of the Inspectorate on a number of approved schools, and includes reports submitted to Superintending Inspectors by inspectors of the department and local authority children's officers.

After the Children Act 1948, the work of the Inspectorate was regionalised in England and Wales. The child care responsibilities of the Home Office in England were transferred to the Department of Health and Social Security (DHSS) in 1971; responsibilities in Wales were transferred to the Welsh Office in the same year. DHSS continued to use the same file symbol prefixes until all files of this series were closed.